Blessed Be The Name of the Lord

At the Wednesday prayer meeting, Michele Rodriguez led the singing. She started with “Blessed Be the Name of The Lord.” That’s a song I had a hard time with when I first heard it. Kelly Patton used to sing it at our service at Christ Church. It has some tough lines: “Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering, when there’s pain in the offering, blessed be your name.” Honest, and so far so good. But then, more honesty that’s hard to take: “You give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name.”

I got over my apprehensions about it when Melissa sang it very prayerfully and praise-fully.

Michele prefaced the song by saying in youth they were studying Job. As she talked about the beginning of Job, the “deal” between God and Satan, there was one of those moments where you understand something you have known. On the surface, God allowing Satan to do whatever to Job is jarring. But as Michele was talking, I found myself thinking this story is not about Job. It’s about people and evil. Everyone will experience what Job did, and the story, in a very artful way, deals with the deepest problem for theology: the problem of evil. Human choice is one part of evil, perhaps the only kind of evil the modern mind can accept. But Job also deals with the malevolent force present in the fabric of the universe.

And of course, we all know this on some level, but the story of Job gets so personal, we are so sympathetic that we cringe at the injustice and pain. I find that I lose sight of myself in the story. It may be the hardest story to break into in the Bible. On the one hand, it is so very human and so I am right there. On the other hand, it’s hard to see it as a story about everyone. Do I hesitate to think Job’s story is the way of the world? Maybe it’s just me.

Of course, Melissa has a much better insight than I do, living the story, and at the same time counting her blessings that she is not Job, etc. One great truth in Job: the best thing that your friends can do is be quiet, but be there. There is a time for talking. But in pastoral care the one thing you have to make sure of is that if you are talking to someone who is suffering, you’re not trying to answer your own questions about pain of God’s justice. And how hard that is for me; I always want something to say.

Melissa has scans coming up. If she is clear, woo hoo! But there is a lot of anxiety about it—almost wish they had not told us. Just let us walk in and say, “Hey you have scans today.” She is basically over the stomach pains that started in August (man, time has flown). She is eating more, has some more energy. Now she needs more confidence to get out and about when she has the energy.

Norbert Itoula was a mathematics instructor in Congo. He now has a job at Transylvania University as a janitor—in the Math and Sciences building! He hopes that he can have some contact with the staff and maybe as he learns English, get a better job in the same building!

The boys don’t have to work too hard at being boys. Sure, they are exasperating at times (bath time especially). Or they just go wild. But they are also unbelievably sweet and funny. How hard it is to be a father, tho. It is a foreign occupation, not natural. The human tendencies are too much there. One day this summer, I thought about the gospel’s beginning and end (narratively speaking). Joseph takes care of Jesus and Mary, and at the end, John takes care of Mary. There is a great need for men who will take care of their families in the ways that Sts. Joseph and John did.

It’s a messed up world. In our quest to be in ministry to and with the school across the street, we are gathering information, looking for needs. It only intensifies the idea that what we need to do is not a program, but an invasion of people into the life of the community. We don’t need a plan, we need people. Lenin had a saying that I think makes strange sense: “quantity has a quality all its own.” The Rock La Roca doesn’t have money (we’ll take some if you want to send it), but what we have is people. We need prayers to determine how we will motivate lots of people to move in. We need 100 people from our worshipping community who will each get to know 2 families in the area. Something like that—pray for it, please. One of the tough stories that hit us was a boy who comes to our church. He lives with his grandmother. His dad is out of state. His mom left one night and has not come back—no one knows where she is. You can well imagine how heartbroken he is. So what do we need? People to come and help with children’s ministry? Well, sure, that’s a start. But what we really need are lots of people who will hang out with our kids, one-on-one, playing and praying with them.

Life is messy. We do everything we can to stay away from that. And ministry is depressing if you don’t have the right info up front. Most of your addicts will die. Most of the people who come out of homosexuality will fall back into it. Your liars will go back to lying, and some people will never stop being s.o.b.’s. Narrow is the way that leads to eternal life, and few find it. You just have to know that going in. But you also have to know that the work of Jesus is messy. Look, He was born, and that’s messy. He died and that was messy. He talked to people, healed them and that was messy. He sent His disciples out and that was messy.

p/g